An envelope is a container, usually made of folded paper, which is designed to enclose documents or other substantially flat objects for the purposes, among others, of keeping these contents together and preventing their inspection by others during transmission to a recipient. The most commonly used envelopes, such as the COM-10 business envelope, are made of a single sheet of paper folded along four lines to form a front panel, side flaps, a back panel, and a closure flap. The side flaps are adhesively secured to the back panel. A sealing edge on the interior surface of the closure flap is usually provided with adhesive for the purpose of sealing the closure flap to the back panel after the envelope has received its contents in the pocket formed by the front panel, side flaps, and back panel.
This design of envelope is simple and inexpensive. The procedures for removing the contents of an envelope of this design, however, usually involve cutting or tearing the closure flap or other portions of the envelope, separating the front panel from the back panel, and reaching inside to remove the contents.
A need exists for an envelope that has opening means situated so as be readily operable without tools and accessible to the user. It should be designed to expose the contents of the envelope in order to facilitate removal of those contents.